


Touching Means Stop Talking

by CJ_fics



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Sexual Tension, Team Arrow, olicity - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 12:12:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2850434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CJ_fics/pseuds/CJ_fics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fic prompt: Team Arrow Realizes that Felicity stops talking whenever Oliver touches her and find it hilarious. Felicity doesn't realize</p>
            </blockquote>





	Touching Means Stop Talking

The first one who realises the behaviour, of course, is John Diggle.   
  
John Diggle has been highly-trained to notice his surroundings and everyone around it. He is especially also in-tune with people he spends more than an hour a day with. So when it first happens, he notices. When it happens again, he notices. When it happens again and again, John Diggle knows it’s a behavioural pattern:   
  
**_The most effective way to get Felicity Smoak to stop talking was for Oliver Queen to touch her._**  
  
John Diggle, being John Diggle, also knows it’s really none of his business. So every time it happens, Felicity will go on a rant about something and Oliver in fondness would reach for some platonic body part, and Felicity would cease talking, John Diggle will just shake his head and smile to himself.  
  
And wonders if anyone else would notice.  
  
—————————————-  
  
It takes Roy six months after his full Team Arrow induction, six months after Oliver, Felicity and Diggle gifted him with Arsenal suit, six months of working every night with the team to keep Starling City safe, to notice. He had other things on his mind, of course, missing Thea, keeping Thea’s letter and the truth about her whereabouts from Oliver, and dealing with what he did in his Mirakuru-induced craze, so he forgave himself for not noticing it sooner.  
  
Oh, he was fully aware that Oliver and Felicity were dancing around each other. They have been since the time he was first introduced to Team Arrow.   
  
At first, he thought Oliver and Felicity were secretly married, or at the very least, boinking every chance they could get. So imagine his shock and upset reaction when he saw Oliver and Sara kissing in the alley behind Verdant. It was all he could do to stop himself from ripping the _two lying pack of cheaters_ apart and tell Felicity.

When he told Diggle, the older man responded with, “ _Oliver and Felicity are not together_ " with a hand on Roy’s shoulder. At his confused looked, Diggle added, " _I know why you might think that. But they’re not. They have never been. Oliver is not cheating on Felicity._ ”  
  
It confused him at first why Oliver would be with Sara while he was so obviously, at least to Roy, crushing on Felicity. It further confused him that even when Oliver and Sara were together,  the Oliver and Felicity dance was still happening. Not as blatantly, but it was still there. There were shared looks, teasing, shoulder-touching, the unspoken lair rule that only Felicity could bandage Oliver up when he got hurt … It was just less obvious.  
  
Now that Sara and Oliver were no longer together, the dance escalated. With a vengeance. Now there were more shoulder squeezes, hand-holding, hair-stroking, longer periods of gazing into each other’s eyes, and actual flirting.   
  
_And now this!_  
  
They were in the refurbished foundry, winding down from another successful patrol. Starling City crime rates were at an all-time low, but the team still made it their mission to further decrease violence and crime in their city. Tonight, they’ve stopped two sexual assaults, three robberies and a gang-related fight.   
  
"I think the new system you designed is really working, Felicity," Diggle says, flashing a smile at their tech guru.  
  
"Yeah, I think so, too," Felicity responds, smiling back, "And it’s proving to be worth the hassle it caused. I swear, at first I was going to develop the software on Java but it was too clunky so I had to re-write the code on Ruby. So it’s easier to manage and for you guys to run on your mobile phones. And—"  
  
Oliver, who had been half-sitting on the edge of Felicity’s desk, reaches a hand out to squeeze Felicity’s shoulder. She stops talking. When he removes his hand, she continues, “— the great thing about it is that it didn’t cost us a penny. Because all built from scratch.”  
  
 _Huh_ , Roy thinks, _has that always happened?_  
  
To prove his suspicions, the next day, as soon as he is in the foundry and sees that the rest of the team are already there, he asks Felicity a question that would induce a babbling event, “Blondie, tell me again how the Lord of the Rings films differ from the books?”  
  
"Well, for one, Arwen wasn’t the elf who rescued the Frodo and the rest of the hobbits. I mean, I’m glad that they had her play a bigger part in the films and I suppose it modernised the source material somehow. Also—"  
  
Oliver, listening fondly to Felicity, reaches out to run his fingers on her hair. Felicity stops talking.  
  
After three seconds, when Oliver removes his hand from her, she continues, “— maybe it was a budget decision, you know. It would have been more cost-effective to not hire another actor to play elf that was in the original rescue scene…”  
  
Roy smirks. _His suspicions were true!_  
  
He goes to where Diggle was sitting, doing some gun maintenance, and keeping an eye on the what was happening, to share his discovery.  
  
"Diggle," Roy starts, whispering "Did you—"  
  
"I saw. I know," Diggle interrupts with a smirk and a snort, "Let it go, Roy. None of our business."  
  
"But it’s hilarious!" Roy says, "And how long have you known?"  
  
Diggle responds by raising an eyebrow and shaking his head at Roy.  
  
——————————————————  
  
Oliver knew that Diggle and Roy knew. At first, he noticed the smirking looks that his two teammates gave each other every so often. The feeling of being somewhat a subject to their inside joke was unmistakable. So he observed.  
  
The sideway glances happened whenever he had a hand on Felicity, he concluded after a few weeks of observation.   
  
It made Oliver quite self-conscious. He didn’t realise how much he touched Felicity on a daily basis. _Platonically_ only, of course. He had long accepted and acknowledged, that while he was irrevocably, unconditionally, helplessly in love with Felicity, she could do much, much better than him. So he’d resolved himself to a life of unrequited love towards her. Because she deserved better.

Sometimes though, he couldn’t help himself. He would reach out to touch her, squeeze her shoulder, stroke her ponytail, reach for her elbow or the small of her back. He would only catch himself doing that because of the tingly sparky feeling on whatever skin was touching a part of her. So, he would almost always retract his hand from her as soon as he realised what he had done, repeating the words, “ _Not yours, not yours, not yours_ " in his head.  
  
He thought no one noticed.   
  
So, lately he clenched his fists around her, and stayed as far away as he could from her. He didn’t want anyone to be privy to his greatest desire and loss, not even his most trusted friends. Because them knowing, and him knowing that they knew, would make it harder to hide what he felt for her. And he didn’t want his feelings for and his relationship with Felicity to be the butt of Diggle and Roy’s inside joke.

So he stopped touching her.  
  
It saddened him though. He’d already vowed to love her from afar, but it was harder not be able to touch her, even _platonically_.  
  
Oliver sighed as he watched Felicity babble excitedly over baby names and their meanings for Diggle and Lyla’s soon-to-be-born child. What he would give to be closer to her and within the circle of her enthusiasm.   
  
He reaches for the salmon ladder bar to start working out instead.  
  
———————————————————————  
  
Sara had notcied a tension in the lair that wasn’t there the last time she visited and helped out in Starling City. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was exactly for her first few days back.  
  
She figures it out four days after she came back.  
  
It was a pretty standard Saturday at the foundry. Everyone was there. She, Oliver, Diggle and Roy were training as Felicity tuned up her systems in the background. It was all pretty normal, until they took a break from working out to talk about the night’s mission.   
  
They were intercepting a rumoured human trafficking ring being run by what was left over from the Bertinelli Mafia. Albert Bertinelli, distant cousin of Helena Bertinelli, had taken over the crime family business, and thought the recent decrease in Starling City’s crime rate was the perfect environment to prove himself to be a major player in mafia. There were some news from the streets of the Glades that a ‘shipment’ of young girls and women from other parts of the world will be docking in Starling City tonight. From there, they would be sent off to other parts of Northern America to be sold into sexual slavery and factory work.   
  
They were going to put a stop to it.  
  
"Let’s check on what we know again and what the plans are for tonight," Oliver announces, grabbing a water bottle from the fridge, "Felicity, what’s our intel on what the Bertinellis have planned tonight?"  
  
"Right," Felicity begins, projecting one of her screens on the blank wall in front of her desk. She stands up from her chair, "So we know that Albert Bertinelli has taken over the crime family in last six months. We’ve intercepted police reports from Gotham that say that he has been active in  that city, specialising in the traffic of women. He has connections in most major cities in Northern America and Europe to whom he sells these women. Horrible, horrible piece of shit, this one. We have to stop him … Anyway, the women will be arriving via a barge called, Girabaldi. The barge set sail from Busan, South Korea. The papers for the barge are all above-board — forged, I suspect. In the manifest from Busan, it said that the barge contained baby toys and garments from South Korea."  
  
Felicity continues, uninterrupted, “The women Bertinelli is trafficking will be from Southeast and South Asia, and some parts of China. It’s set to dock in the Starling City port at 22:00, that’s ten p.m. for you n00bs. The container vessels that the women will be on is said to be able to hold twenty-five people. And we’re expecting 15 containers to be on that barge. The barges that have the women should be interspersed randomly in between the ones that contain toys and clothes. We’re expecting to have about two hundred to two hundred fifty women being trafficked on Girabaldi.”  
  
Felicity pauses for two second to take a breath, “One top of that. SCPD and FBI reports say that the Bertinelli family has gathered about two hundred members in the last few months. And Bertinelli never travels without his five-man-strong wall of muscle. All trained in the Italian military. All armed. All deadly. So the plan for tonight is to get to the docks way before they get there. I’ve borrowed the CCTV camera feed — all right, all right, I _hacked_ into the CCTV cameras at the docks. There’s been no movement since last night. So I think the team should be setting up there as soon as it gets dark. Way before the Girabaldi docks. Captain Lance says that unless the SCPD have a valid reason to be there, they can’t stake the docks out. But they will be ready to move and help when the commotion starts. The commotion that Team Arrow will cause.”  
  
Felicity turns to Diggle, “Digg, how about you take over the details of plans for tonight while I grab some water? I think that was the most I’ve talked ever! Well, no, I did do a two-hour lecture for my masters at MIT one time. About how slack spaces can be used for steganography. It was very involved. But I had a glass of water in the podium, so it wasn’t that bad. And I really should stop talking. And I will. In three, two, one.”  
  
Roy hands Felicity a water bottle as Digg starts talking.   
  
It was at this point that Sara pinpointed what was odd. At no point in the minutes that Felicity talked, and went off tangent, and rambled, was she interrupted. Sara had been used to the natural breaks in Felicity’s talking. Natural breaks brought about by Oliver reaching a hand out to touch her.   
  
He didn’t even lay a comforting hand when Felicity went on a tangent about what a horrible man Bertinelli was and that the team should stop him, Sara realised. Or when Felicity complained about the lack of water and babbled about her lecture at MIT.  
  
Sara looks sideways at Oliver to see why he was behaving oddly. To her surprise, her friend had his fists clenched on his sides as he stood as the farthest possible point from Felicity while still being part of the team huddle. He was looking down at his feet, his jawline tight.  
  
Sara turns to look at Roy, who met her gaze and then flashed her a sad guilty-looking half-smile.  
  
 _What’s going on?_ she thinks to herself.  
  
"What?" Digg asks, "Was there something you needed to clarify, Sara?"  
  
"Nothing that can’t wait, Digg," Sara says as Roy snorts.   
  
"Care to share with the rest of the class?" Felicity chimes in.  
  
"You’re all just behaving very oddly," Sara answers.  
  
"Oddly?" Oliver growls.  
  
"Yes, oddly!" Roy bursts out, "You don’t touch Felicity anymore!"  
  
Oliver exclaims, “What?” as Diggle warns, “Roy…”  
  
"No, I’m right and you now it, Digg!" Roy insists and then points to Sara, "Even she knows it!"  
  
"What. Are. You. Talking. About. Harper?" Oliver challenges the younger man.  
  
"You! You’ve stopped touching Felicity! It’s messing with the team mojo," Roy explains, turning his pointing judge-y finger on Oliver.  
  
"How is that any of you business?" Oliver says, advancing on Roy. Diggle and Sara move to stop Oliver from reaching Roy, and having an all-out brawl.  
  
"Guys, guys, stop!" Felicity shouts in her Loud Voice.  
  
As soon as she has everyone’s attention, she says calmly, “Oliver can touch whomever he wants to touch, whenever. He also can refuse to touch anyone he doesn’t want to touch, whenever. That’s none of anyone’s business. Well, except the touchee. Or the non-touchee, whatever the case may be. But that’s another issue — Anyway, we have a mission tonight. Remember? Girabaldi? Young women from Asia being trafficked? In the docks? Bertinelli? So get your heads out of your asses and get back to business!”  
  
Everyone got back to business.  
  
Roy and Sara though, they kept secretly snickering to each other all night.  
  
 ———————————————————————————  
  
After, when the two hundred forty five young women were safely held in various women’s shelters across Starling City, and Albert Bertinelli and his goons were under arrest, Felicity stayed in the lair to clean up traces of her hacking activities. That’s how she always ended their missions, removing all traces of her presence in the databases and the camera feeds that she needed to hack for the team.   
  
The rest of the team had left for the night. Before they left, they all approached her and apologised for what happened before they all got their head out of their asses and got back to their mission.   
  
Well, all of them with the exception of Oliver Queen. He opted to get some patrol time done after stopping the Bertinelli’s. He had yet to make a reappearance at the lair.  
  
Felicity told herself that the moment she was done with cleaning up her digital footprints, she was going to head home herself. She was _not_ waiting for Oliver to come back.  
  
"Hey, you’re still here."   
  
Felicity jumps at the sound of Oliver’s voice. _Goddamned soundless ninja footsteps._  
  
"Yeah, just finishing up here and then I’m heading home. Won’t take but another ten minutes," she said, not turning away from her monitors and her keyboard.  
  
As she finishes up, she hears Oliver stash his gear in their proper places. She stands up as soon as she’s done, “I’m off—”  
  
"I’m sorry," Oliver says, leaning back against the med table behind her computer desk.  
  
"For what?"  
  
"About earlier. I didn’t know what came over Roy," Oliver explains.  
  
"Oh, that. Don’t worry about it. He’s a weird kid," Felicity says, hand waving as if to dismiss the thought.  
  
"The reason why I’ve stopped touching you—"  
  
"You don’t have to explain, Oliver," Felicity interrupts, turning away to begin getting her things together "You really don’t. You don’t owe me any explanation, really. I—"  
  
Oliver steps closer to her and lays a hand on her shoulder.  
  
"I do have to explain," he says, "I need to. I want to. Because you’re important to me, Felicity. The most important one."  
  
He waits for her to respond, and when she doesn’t, he continues, “The reason why I’ve stopped touching you is because I don’t deserve to. I only realised how much I did it when I noticed that Diggle and Roy were aware of how much I touched you. And they knew what it meant.”  
  
"What does it mean?" Felicity asks as she turns to face him, dislodging his hand on her shoulder.  
  
"Everything," he whispers as he cups her face and leans down to kiss her.  
  
———————————————————————  
  
A month later, Roy discovers something new.  
  
Oliver was in the middle of a recurring fight with Diggle about the baby-daddy-to-be’s field work. Specifically, Oliver had it in his head that fatherhood meant that Diggle should no longer be out in the field. Diggle disagreed.  
  
Roy and Felicity were watching in the sidelines, ready to intervene, if necessary.  
  
"Oliver, you would be dead ten times over, if not for me. Out in the field. Having your back," Diggle shouts.   
  
"I know, and I thank you for that. Of course, I appreciate that, Diggle!" Oliver shouts back, "But you’re going to be someone father, and your kid and Lyla will need you to be safe!"  
  
"Lyla knows the risks I take. She knows, and supports, that I am willing to take those risks. For the crusade! For the mission. For the team! And what kind of father would I be to my kid, if I’m the kind of man who would leave his partners, his teammates alone in the field when I’m perfectly capable of having their backs?" Diggle argues.  
  
"It’s not like you won’t have our backs! You’ll still be part of the team. But you’ll be more in tactics and planning, not out in the field with us," Oliver insists, "What kind of friend would I be to expect you to risk your life, knowing perfectly well that you have a family, a kid, waiting for you? How do you expect me to live with myself, if I put you at risk? I can’t—"  
  
Felicity reaches out to touch the middle of Oliver’s back to comfort him. He stops talking.  
  
"Huh," Roy mumbles, "She does it to him as well."  
  
"Does what?" Felicity asks, turning towards Roy without removing her hand from Oliver’s back.  
  
"Whenever he touches you, you stop talking," Diggle responds for Roy, sighing and moving away from facing Oliver to stand next to Roy, "The kid just realised that you do the same to Oliver."  
  
"We do that?" Oliver asks, putting an arm around Felicity’s waist as he turns around to face Roy and Diggle, Felicity by his side.  
  
"Huh," Felicity mumbles in response, "We do do that."  
  
At the surprised look on Oliver’s and Felicity’s faces, Diggle and Roy laugh out loud.

**Author's Note:**

> Original post: http://outoftheclosetshipper.tumblr.com/post/96625623023/oliver-felicity-team-arrow-realizes-that-felicity


End file.
